Wonderful Multimedia Work

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Ex-AP photographer Chien-min Chung profiles a young Mongolian contortionist returning to her countryside home, after her family runs out of tuition money. This soundslides feature makes up for image quality with the intimacy and sheer force of its story. Features some great Mongolian music.

While on assignment for NatGeo in 07-08, Magnum photographer Chien-Chi Chang followed North Korean religious refugees out of China and into SE Asia. While avoiding direct images of the refugees’ faces, the piece incorporates great use of ambient sound, cellphone text messages, audio interviews and an anomalous yet effective 4 seconds of video, to relate this brutal journey to remarkable effect.

Chien-Chi’s “Escape from N.K” and Donald Weber’s “Chernobyl Stalkers” stand out for allowing the viewer space to breathe, as opposed to the traditional documentary style that dominates much of the linear soundslides/video mashups appearing today.

Juxtaposing clips from Andrei Tarkovsky’s 1979 film, “Stalker, ” with photos and video of precious metal scavengers in Chernobyl, this bizarre mood-piece, with its new-agey music and absurdist yellow font, has to be seen to be truly grasped.